Leeds Community Cinema

Menu

Minicine // Film Society of the Year 2015

Last Saturday, 3 October, Sheffield played host to the Cinema For All Community Cinema Conference and Film Society of the Year Awards 2015. The Conference and Awards are a big weekend in the community cinema world. It’s bursting with interesting panels, fascinating film screenings and inspiring volunteers and organisations from across the UK, who consistently bring the best of cinema to their communities.

The Film Society of the Year awards provide a special evening to highlight and recognise the outstanding work volunteer exhibitors have achieved throughout the last twelve months…

…and we are absolutely delighted and astounded to have won not only the award for Best Marketing and Publicity, not only the award for Best Programming, but also the prestigious Engholm Prize for Film Society of the Year!

This was completely unexpected but wholly appreciated, hence our reactions on stage when accepting the awards:

We’ve had a week to let the magnitude of this incredible achievement sink in and it feels really, really good; to have built an audience and a community around cinema and film, to have a place, a home, to channel our passion and creativity, to share stories and cake, and to be recognised, understood and appreciated for it in this way.

Having had a chance to gather our thoughts and superlatives, we’d now like to articulate what we couldn’t on stage.

Community cinema is a special reaction to the formula of great minds collaborating. We would like to thank Barry Yates, a dedicated audience member and all round lovely chap, who was instrumental in the programming of our Nordic Season earlier this year and the boost of our morale. Barry has always been one of Minicine’s most exuberant cheerleaders and has gone on to achieve great things with KinoFólk in York – yet another shining example of the warm that makes the community cinema sector glow.

While we have been refining the blueprints of Minicine over the last year, it’s been Sally Chadderton who has made them jump off the page. Sally’s work has been instrumental to the important extras of Minicine, extras that help to make us the organisation we want to be. Most notably seen in the Mincine at The Mills season passes; a small but meaningful token our audiences can hold onto as a keepsake. We feel it was these season passes that flew the flag for Minicine winning the Best Marketing and Publicity award.

We’d like to thank Sarah and her team at Noisette Bakehouse for their generosity, support and a sweetness equal only to their divine cakes. It’s been a joy to see this organisation grow (we always knew you were out of our league).

We’ve been all over this year and we’d like to thank the following for inviting us in and making us feel at home:

Ellie and Matt at The Gallery at Munro House and Café 164 – thank you for collaborating with us and helping us broaden our programming horizons, creating a bridge between art exhibition and cinema.

To Fiona and her team at The Arch Café, thank you for sharing our excitement for showing films to the local community in unique ways.

And thank you to The Orangery for helping us to introduce family friendly screenings to our programme.

Edel, Dany and Mike, simply put, Minicine wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you all for taking a punt and nurturing a fledgling film club. It is an honour to continue what you started.

And now we’s all growns up!

Last but not least, let’s finish where we started (and will continue) – Armley Mills Industrial Museum – home from the very beginning and a place that we hold very dear. Lesley, Louise and the entire Mills team that stays after hours, smile never wavering, so a couple of film nerds can indulge in sharing cinema. Some of our fondest memories are held among the 26 seats found in the basement by the canal.

A shout out to the invaluable support of a fine organisation; Cinema For All.

To all the individuals and organisations that have helped spread the word and shared the love for Minicine, we thank you so much. You have done more for us than you will know.

This brings us to all those that we do this for and all those that make it possible – our audience. It is your efforts and interest that threads us all together; making a community to be proud of. Our gratitude for your support cannot be put into words…

Abi and Woody: …

… so please allow us to show you the only way we know how; by continuing to serve you film and cake.

Read what the Film Society of the Year Awards 2015 judges had to say about us.